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Music

Music From Memory Are the Reissue Label Unearthing Obscure Treats and Treasures

We spoke to the team behind the Dutch imprint who're bringing the best music no one else has ever heard to the masses.

Founded over in Amsterdam a few years back by record-obsessives Abel Nagengast, Jamie Tiller, and Tako Reyenga, Music From Memory has become one of Europe, if not the world's, most cherished imprints. Specializing in unearthing oddities and obscurities from around the globe, MfM perform a simple service—find brilliant, strange and strangely brilliant music from unexpected sources, spaces, and places, and serve it up in an incredibly aesthetically appealing package—with aplomb. Every new release is a must-buy on sight.

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This year alone they've re-issued material by the likes of Spanish new age practitioner Suso Sáiz, forgotten Birmingham-based avant-dreampop group the System, and Japan's very own Dip in the Pool who's "On Retinae" is a strong contender for best record ever. With that in mind, we decided to have a quick chat with Jamie Tiller about the MfM ethos, obscurity, and shadow cabals of rare record dealers.

Oh, and the Music from Memory team have very kindly slid an exclusive track our way. Below, you'll find the jungle-abstractions of "Kiuá" by Andréa Daltro, taken from the label's forthcoming Outro Tempo: Electronic and Contemporary Music from Brazil, 1978-1992 compilation, which is one we're looking forward to immensely.

THUMP: Firstly, can you tell us a little about what led to the founding of the label? What's your musical background, formative experiences, all that jazz.
Music from Memory: The label started after we had been in touch with a couple of artists; Leon Lowman and Gigi Masin to source copies of their LP's. Both were privately released so it made sense to try track them down and see if they might have a few spare copies still knocking around. Not many people were looking for these records at the time so we got some copies and got got talking to them both a bit more. Both artists it turned out had an archive of their music from cassette and CD as well as vinyl and also unreleased material which turned out to be amazing. And the idea just really grew from there; hey this has to be shared.

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This might be a thick question but I've always wanted to know how you source the records you release—is there some shadow underground cabal of dealers you're in cahoots with?
If only there was definitely a shadow underground of dealers haha. We've definitely made some good contacts and people who've helped us track down certain records we maybe couldn't track down due to geographical location. But even those people we've connected with mainly through digging in the real world and connecting with like minded souls from all over the planet; sharing information, sharing records. I think we started maybe delving into certain types of music before these things became let's say the territory of Discogs sharks. We've all I would say had a somewhat restless attitude to discovering new music and maybe pushing our own taste in new and interesting directions. There's so much amazing music still to be discovered and we tend to be interested more in what's still out there and sharing some of our finds or finds of those in our circle of friends than any kind of supply and demand service reissuing hyped and sought after records.

Do you feel like MfM is part of any specific scene?
I don't really know that we do. I think we're all quite adverse to feeling part of a particular scene and we always like to turn left when everyone else starts turning right. It's amazing how quickly something can turn into a cliche of itself and you see that with many 'scenes' of people let's say where one or two people's idea or ways of playing music develop into a scene and quickly everything around it becomes a dogma or a cliche where everyone blindly follows the same to the point where everyone around that scene all starts playing the same records, wearing the same clothes and even saying the same things.

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I mean we do come at a lot of this music maybe with dance music ears and much of our support comes from those interested or involved in dance music. But then for the most part we aren't putting out contemporary dance music whatsoever. Though of course with our 12" series of course we're definitely into the idea of some of the tracks being something with dance floor potential. On the other hand I think we all really enjoy the cross over potential of some of our releases to reach out to those who might listen to indie music and come very much at the music from another perspective or people having come more from a funk and soul background getting switched on to our label.

Who does the artwork for the releases? And, again, is there a kind of internal logic for it?
The artwork has been by David McFarline, an Irish designer, and by Steele Bonus an Australian guy. They are two people deeply into music and records themselves as well as being great designers. A connection to the music and the sensibilities then has been really important.

What's the record you'd love to reissue more than any?
We could tell you, but then of course we'd have to kill you haha. No honestly, there are definitely a few artists we would love to work with on reissuing some of their work but to tell you here we would be massively shooting ourselves in the foot because we'd then have ten others label frantically trying to track them down to do the same thing which wouldn't make the process any easier! And as I said we're much more interested in finding our own way and music close to us rather than fighting it all out with those who seem in a race to put things out with little thought as to why they might put that music out. We have lots of releases lined up which we're really looking forward to sharing with people so I guess actually those are the ones we'd most like to reissue!

Josh Baines is THUMP's UK Editor and he's on Twitter